Fortunately, he had brought his meal card when he went out, but unfortunately, it was still too early. Although the cafeteria was open, Grace Bennett's favorite roujiamo wasn't being served yet.

So he bought two tea eggs, a bowl of eight-treasure porridge, and two meat buns. Sitting in a corner, he ate while thinking.

He took out his phone to check the time: 5:49. That meant he had been asleep on the playground for about an hour and twenty minutes.

In just over an hour, a lot of strange and wonderful knowledge had been loaded into Grace Bennett's mind.

That ticking sound was still there, but it no longer felt annoying, because Grace Bennett now understood that it wasn't noise, but some kind of data transmission signal.

The data in Grace Bennett's head turned into folders. As long as he used his consciousness to click on a folder, the corresponding knowledge would be stored in his brain. It felt a bit like how a hard drive works.

It's just that, for now, this knowledge was still rather basic. What excited Grace Bennett the most was the elementary artificial intelligence.

Of course, even the elementary knowledge from an extraterrestrial civilization was many times more advanced than the current artificial intelligence on Earth.

He peeled a tea egg and took a big bite.

Grace Bennett analyzed, "That civilization in the illusion probably really exists. After all, all this random stuff in my head couldn't have just appeared out of nowhere."

"It's a pity that, for some unknown reason, all the humans who created that civilization disappeared. The huge golden dome, according to its preset, began transmitting the civilization's knowledge into the universe—maybe hoping their civilization could be continued."

"And then, for some other unknown reason, I, here on Earth, received the signal..."

The two tea eggs were quickly finished, leaving a pile of coffee-colored eggshells on the plate.

Grace Bennett took a sip of eight-treasure porridge and started on the buns. The freshly steamed buns were a bit hot, so he bit a hole and blew into it.

"Knowledge is a wonderful thing," Grace Bennett thought. "Nowadays, knowledge is wealth. Edison never actually invented the light bulb, but he did develop carbonized bamboo filament, which set him on the road to riches. His company evolved over time into today's General Electric, one of the Fortune Global 500."

"And today, I've received the legacy of an alien civilization. Could I also use this knowledge to create a Fortune 500 company? At the very least, if I can keep my family's house, that would be good enough—so my parents, after a lifetime of hard work, won't have to worry about having nowhere to live in their old age."

The meal ended amid his thoughts, and only then did Grace Bennett suddenly realize how calm he was.

As an ordinary college freshman, to suddenly receive a civilization's legacy that could shock the world, and yet not feel the least bit panicked—

He stood up, patted the dust off himself, and immediately started thinking about how to monetize the knowledge. Wasn't that a bit abnormal?

Shouldn't a normal person be freaking out, or at least shocked and overwhelmed?

"Could it be that the knowledge not only supplemented my brain's memory, but also made me calmer?" Grace Bennett wondered.

Chapter 002 Grace Bennett, You've Changed

All day long, Grace Bennett was absent-minded, thinking about how to turn knowledge into profit.

Parents always hope their children will study hard and become successful, but they don't realize that in the real world, choices matter far more than effort. The way you think determines your path, and your starting point determines your height.

Grace Bennett wanted to choose the right starting point. After all, he had no capital at hand. If he could just make a CPU and take down Intel in one go, that would be awesome.

But outside of web novels, things like that don't happen in real life. Just building a semiconductor factory to manufacture CPUs would require an investment of tens of billions of dollars.

Besides, Grace Bennett didn't plan to sell his knowledge or seek venture capital. As the ancients said, "If the ruler is not discreet, he will lose his ministers; if the minister is not discreet, he will lose his life; if a plan is not kept secret, it will fail."

So, telling others that he was receiving the legacy of an extraterrestrial civilization—Grace Bennett would never do such a thing.

After afternoon classes, Edward Harris and Ryan Carter went to play basketball. The sudden, dramatic change had left Grace Bennett in no mood for sports, so he made up an excuse and stayed in the dorm.

Another classmate, William Clark, was always quiet and didn't like intense competition on the court.

Making himself a cup of unsweetened Nescafé, Grace Bennett sat at his desk, staring blankly at his laptop screen. He opened Bilibili to catch up on last week's "Cells at Work," but while his eyes were on the screen, his mind was elsewhere.

At that moment, he heard William Clark laughing behind him. Grace Bennett turned to look and saw that he was scrolling through Douyin—maybe he'd found a funny short video.

Suddenly~

A thought struck Grace Bennett, and he said to William Clark, "Douyin is already a super popular app. What if we made some kind of ranking list, gathering all the trending resources from Douyin in one place—do you think there's money to be made?"

William Clark listened to Grace Bennett, pushed up his glasses, and put down his phone.

This quiet Shandong guy was true to his name—nearly 1.9 meters tall, built like an ox, but oddly enough, he didn't like sports.

Ryan Carter often grumbled that William Clark's refusal to play basketball was a huge loss for campus basketball.

"That's a bit too low-end," William Clark said. "Douyin is fun, but it's not exactly something you can show off."

Grace Bennett gave a wry smile. "Even you, a heavy Douyin user, think that way?"